Almost everything worth buying, has a price. The US's historical success was primarily accomplished through brain draining the rest of the world, and of course, they did this with $$$. The temptation for top global talent to go to the US to make their fortune - and then go back and retire comfortably at home - still exists, if not for the empire shooting itself in the foot through congesting their system with H1b Indians instead of targeting the actual top scientific and engineering talent - ie East Asians and Eastern Europeans.
Chinese are still granted visa at one of the highest rates in US, in fact this is a point of great sensitivity to Indians.
It's not for a lack of trying, it's just that the median income in China and US don't differ by much (gdp per capita is an average and not a median, therefore being distorted by the 0.1%).
In the last year, China had proportionally only as many H1Bs as Germany. And proportionally a lesser expatriation rate than EU. Because living standards have become very attractive at home.
I find that the typical American is ignorant and lacks the foresight to do what makes the most financial and life-style sense; that doesn't mean, however, that they can't do it. I've seen countless examples of people doing this, but they tend to be from the smarter ethnic groups like Asians.
The US dollar isn't just used by China. The strategy the US is currently pursuing is to use the power of the dollar to move manufacturing out of China and diversify it across the rest of the world - particularly among countries not likely to rebel against dollar hegemony.
Dollar is just a resource commodity "mined" in US, like qing gold or roman silver, it doesn't have a "power" aside from well, what gold or valuables have. They're "mined" and "sold" at a rate proportional to international demand.
You can't pay someone who has fuck all industry, education or innovation to out compete another power that has everything. And if you flood a small economy with money but no goods, you'll just ruin them with inflation.
Once that's done, it'll sanction, isolate, and "contain" China until it bends the knee or becomes as poor and pathetic as Iran.
If that's the plan it's as retarded as if Qing in 1800 decides to use it's unlimited reserves to boost SEA to replace Britain and then make Britain as poor as Dzungaria with sanctions. US has 0 influence on what China's industry lines and universities do.
US can cut off its own market, but then it risks China using nonviolent and violent pressure to kick open the door at a later date. If US can't match China in production and science, it will not be able to defend itself if China comes knocking later. Whether by peace or violence, smaller resource rich economies can't indefinitely give cold shoulder to larger industrialised ones.
Of course, it's having a hard time doing so, mainly because the "rest of the world" is particularly incompetent compared to China
No shit, because they're not even at the same stage of development?
As an example:
Keep in mind China has a lot of regions not focused on industry.
and so it's been difficult to replace what China offers, even with all the new investment.
But it would also be an exaggeration to say that there hasn't been any effect. Manufacturing, particularly low cost manufacturing, is diversifying; and Chinese manufacturing has been struggling more than it did in the past, if you look at total index numbers.
It has been "struggling" to increase its growth rate, but is still growing. And it can be near 100% chalked up to that there isn't much market left, it's hard to grow exponentially when you're already on top.
The process the US kicked off - of developing manufacturing in the rest of the world
You mean like graciously donating the whole personal vehicle sector to China?
- will effect changes, as we're seeing in places like Vietnam, Indonesia, and even India.
We're just fortunate that the Chinese government did have the foresight to invest and successfully transition the economy towards emerging technology sectors like green energy, electric vehicles, and robotics, where it has built a moat that even the US can't easily overcome. Otherwise, the hit to China's economy would've been much worse from US actions.
Because being a resource rich country (dollars are no different of a commodity than say Russian hydrocarbons) is not an all powerful automatic boon, it is something that needs to be carefully leveraged, otherwise it won't yield extra national power or increase your development level.
How do you think US lost all those fields to China in the first place?
